Often lately when I’m writing it feels like I’m sculpting. I’ve never sculpted. Well, maybe I did in some elementary school art class, but who can remember that? Not me. I don’t know how to sculpt. But this feeling I have lately is what I imagine sculpting to be like. It may happen when I’m working on a big script or, more likely, when I’m composing.
The feeling is that of having a big chunk of material that I’m chipping away at to create something. I don’t mean I’m literally looking at all the possible words or notes that I could use, then I eliminate the ones I won’t use until I have a speech or melody. It’s more that I have a certain amount of material that I have to write, and I chip away at it little by little as I write more and more.
With a script, it’s a result of the “pre-writing” I do. My first major step with a new piece is to write a lot about the idea, the characters, the story, etc. So by the time I start writing the first real draft, I already know the story, the scenes are, what happens in each; if it’s a musical I know where the songs happen, what they’re about, who sings them, and what basic type each song is: ballad; up-tempo; charm song; something dancy. I may not know exactly how long the piece will end up being, but I know I have certain things I’ll have to write before I have a complete draft of the script. That doesn’t mean I don’t find new ideas or surprises as I write. I do, and I embrace them, and they sometimes lead to great things.
I’ve tried writing the other way: starting with a blank page and some germ of an idea; supposedly discovering what it’s all about as I write it. But it seems to produce a confused jumble of a piece that I have a hard time making sense of. It’s not a very satisfying process for me. I think I have a strong left- and right-brain: I’m organized and creative. In those quizzes you can take that show a result of a brain with a spot somewhere representing where you fall on the left-brain/right-brain thing, my result is almost right in the center, on more than one test. So I think my pre-writing method satisfies both hemispheres, both tendencies.
I don’t really pre-write music in that same way. However, since all I really write anymore is songs and other material for musicals, I always have the framework of lyrics and character and dramatic situation. Often as I write music, the lyrics will change, sometimes a little and sometimes a lot, but the basics—subject matter, character, situation— generally stay.
The sculpting feeling is even stronger with the music. Although I often have (sometimes very clear) ideas of what the music will sound like as I’m writing lyrics, I generally don’t really work on the music until I have a good draft of the script done. So just like with the pre-writing and the script, I know when I start on the music that I have a certain amount of things I have to write before I have a complete draft of the score. So in the larger sense, I’m chipping away at the score, song by song, and with each song I’m chipping away at it, section by section, phrases by phrase, occasionally even note by note.
So, today I will return to sculpting. I’ve been working for a while this summer on a new show. I’ve written a lot this summer: a 10-minute play; a 10-minute musical; another play and a musical each about 15 minutes or so; a one-act play which I think is done, for now anyway; a one-act musical for a young audience (first draft of script done, needs a lot of work, more story development—guess I didn’t do enough pre-writing—no music yet); and this musical I’m focusing on now—a long one-act, an hour, maybe 70 minutes or so. If I really work at it the rest of this week and next, I could have a mostly complete draft of the score soon.
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